“He doesn’t chase girls.”
“Mhmm,” she said, her voice sounding like I’d said a load of baloney.
I heard the crunch of Keane’s boots on the gravel just as he popped in the doorway, arms laden with pillows and blankets. “Here ya go,” he said, dumping them unceremoniously all over Tori. “There’s even a sheet in there, for you to put over the couch.”
“That’s good,” Tori said, standing up and letting the blankets fall around her. “Good ol’ Casanova,” she said with a pat on the back of the couch. “It’s always smart to have protection.”
Keane looked from me to her, and I turned to look at the floor. “Right. Okay. Ready, Navy?”
I lifted my head, eyes locking with his. Was I ready? Not just in the sense of sleeping outside, but ready to think with my heart and not my head?
“I think so,” I said, my words having double meaning. “Goodnight,” I said to Tori when I reached the door. Keane was already steps ahead of me.
“Remember,” she said, very seriously. “Don’t gnaw on it like you did those hot dogs.”
It took a second for her comment to register, and in that brief moment she laughed.
“Your face. God, you don’t hide anything in your expressions, do you?”
And that’s exactly what put me at a disadvantage. “Nope.” I closed the door behind me and followed Keane to the truck.
Out here in the near wilderness, there weren’t any streetlamps. Just the one lone floodlight from the cabin illuminated our path to the truck. When the gravel disappeared on the ground, so did Keane. “Where are you?” I whispered loudly in the dark.
“Keep walking straight,” his voice came from somewhere ahead of me.
“It’s so dark out here.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what happens after the sun sets.”
I giggled. “Shut up.”
“There you are.” His hands clasped my shoulders in the dark. “You made it.”
“Where’s the tent?” My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the night yet, so I squinted but all I could make out was his truck.
“Well…” Keane gestured toward the bed of his truck. “I thought about that memory you have from high school—junior prom. I remember most of it—not the parts that you do, but I remember laying eight billion blankets down and French fries.” He slid his phone from his pocket and turned Get Lucky on. “Uh… this is not a euphemism. I just thought it would be nice to kind of recreate that night. No cheap movie seats.”
“No,” I said, lifting my face to the night sky. “Just the stars.”
He breathed out. “Exactly. So, you game?”
I tilted my head so I could see him more clearly. In the pale blue light from his phone, I could see just how earnest he was. “I love it.”
“Good.” He patted the tailgate. “I found this air mattress online; it’s supposed to fit the bed and accommodate the wheel wells. Thought it would be more comfortable than if we slept on a billion blankets.”
As he waved his phone over the back of his truck, I craned my neck to better see. There indeed was an air mattress that seemed tailor-made for his truck. It was covered in sheets and blankets and pillows and looked like the coziest thing I’d ever seen. “Keane,” I said, unbelievably touched. “This looks incredible.”
“The only thing is, if it rains, we’re fucked.” Keane laughed nervously. “They make tents for truck beds, but I chose the air mattress instead.”
“You chose well,” I said and took the hand he offered for me to climb up. “If it rains, I guess we’ll have to run for the cabin.” I hopped onto the mattress, immediately kicking my shoes off. Keane climbed in behind me and we both crawled over the blankets until we reached the back. Even though it was an air mattress, it was incredibly comfortable thanks to the throws and quilts he’d covered it with.
“I’ve even got a little lantern here,” he said, lighting up the battery powered contraption hanging above our heads. It cast a soft, yellow light over our heads as we exchanged identical grins.
“You thought of everything,” I said, climbing under the blankets. Excitement poured through me. This brought back at least a dozen good memories of laying out under the stars on nights just like this one.
“Well, I didn’t figure out a way to bring French fries and chocolate milkshakes with me.”
“I’m stuffed anyway,” I said, rubbing my stomach. I settled the blankets around me and found Keane’s hand under them. He clasped mine immediately, and we threaded our fingers. I couldn’t stop staring up at the sky, committing the entire scene to memory. This was so perfect, I feared that if I closed my eyes, I’d forget it ever happened.
Get Lucky faded away and after a minute another song came on.
I turned my head, looking at him in question.
“Bloodstream,” he said.
“I know the song.”
“It was the last slow song of junior prom. You remember the after party—A.K.A. French fries and milkshakes—but I remember this song.”
It was coming to me slowly. “We danced to this one.”
He nodded. “Yep. Well, technically we danced to them all together. But you really loved this one because it was in that show with the vampires you like.”
“The Vampire Diaries.”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, you loved this song. We were going to leave after they crowned the royalty, but we stayed for this song.”
It touched me that he remembered. Despite not wanting to before, I closed my eyes and willed the memory forward. Slow dancing with Keane, my head on his shoulder. Then, I remembered. “Tori was with…”
“Tori?”
“Yeah, you guys were off then. She went to junior prom with someone else. I can’t remember his name.”
Keane sighed and let go of my hand under the covers to rub his hands down his face. “I wasn’t even thinking about Tori.”
Part of me wanted to apologize for bringing it up and ruining the memory. But it was an insecurity of mine. For so, so long my focus and affections had been solely directed to Keane. And his hadn’t been toward me. It was hard to believe that his past wouldn’t loom over us, in whatever us we would be from here. “Well, she was always there.”
“You were always there.”
I shook my head. My heart, which had felt so light, suddenly felt so heavy. “There was Tori. Then Anna. Then a few other girls I can’t remember. Suzie. Megan.”
“No. Tori wasn’t first.”
“Yes, she was. Unless there was someone else you didn’t tell me about.” I shivered, but it wasn’t cold.
“There was. You.”
“Keane. We have always been friends.”
“You’re the prettiest girl, Navy.”
My heart stopped beating. “That’s what you said.”
“It’s still true. You’re the prettiest girl. When we were kids, I probably mostly talked to you because I liked you. But after a while, the friendship was stronger than those other feelings. And in high school, it was easy to rely on you as a friend only. My brother had just gone off to a war zone. His friends started coming home in fucking body bags. I wasn’t in the right headspace to potentially lose a friend, too. I was a dumb ass in high school.”